SUSI

Background

The Easy sign-up project was funded by IT Services' Innovation Fund to develop a simple way to generate lists of people by scanning their University cards. Our mobile application can use:

NFC, on NFC-capable Android devices

barcode scanning using a phone's camera

manual entry by University card number or SSO username

The application is currently in alpha, and will have its first real-world test at the 2015 Freshers' Fair. Later, we expect to use the application for capturing lecture attendance.

The application

The application supports Android and iOS devices, and uses the NFC and camera capabilities. Unfortunately we cannot provide NFC support on iOS devices.

The app works best when connected to the internet, but is capable of working offline by the cards' details and uploading them later.

When used with an NFC-capable device, you just need to hold the card to the phone for the person to be recognised and added to the list.

As we're in alpha, the application is not yet in any app stores. If you'd like to use it, please get in touch.

Management roles

The service allows the creation of events, each managed by an admin group. Users have one of the following roles:

admin — can add and remove users from each role, and perform the other roles

organiser — can create and delete events, add people to them, and see who is in them

update — can add and remove people from events, but cannot see who is in them

read — can see who is listed in an event, but cannot add or remove people

Technical information

Web service

The mobile application talks to a RESTful API, which supports OAuth2 for authentication and authorization. We expect to support alternative client implementations, and will release API documentation once out of alpha.

The collected data is stored in GroupStore, facilitating its reuse in other systems.